Faction FR5: (Synth)

[Tunicle]

(Synth) has been FR5'd:

You will find Liberty Police are no longer keen on your ships flying by or docking at their bases.

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Original Link for Admin/Mod Use | Discovery Server & Forums Rules | Before You Post Here

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If you require evidence, you may request such via PM from a Staff member. Only the accused or an official faction leader of the accused person's faction may request such. Once you have the evidence, and if you wish to dispute it, you may post in the Sanction Thread below. Do not continue PM'ing a staff member, as that will result in your Appeal being denied. If you PM a staff or post in the sanction thread and you are not directly involved, you are consenting to be subjected to the reprisal of my choice which may involve in game repercussions up to a ban. Blaming members of your immediate family, neighbors, friends, pets, and assorted Orcs, Trolls and any other legendary creatures may result in the use of Admin Right #CTE 750AE

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[Zukeenee]

Ouch. Locked at full hostile to LPI for an unpaid bogus parking ticket. Talk about overkill.

This isn't an enforceable FR5, though. An FR5 request requires two things, as outlined in the server rules. The request must "include link(s) to valid forum roleplay, as well as actual interaction between the character and the official faction." The first part's pretty obvious; the forum roleplay's right here. For the second part, though, during my time as an admin, we understood "interaction" to mean "in-game interaction". (Synth)-tagged players have interacted with LPI-tagged players exactly three times. The first two times were with one of our advertiser-freighters, (Synth)Dave, and LPI-Michael.Lawson[RO]. The recruit officer liked Dave's sales pitch and encouraged us to get in touch with the commissioner to set up a deal. Thus, the previously linked forum RP happened. The third and final time that (Synth) ships interacted with the LPI- happened much more recently, when (Synth)Dave and myself, (Synth)Josh, found a group of LPI- fighters returning from a fight in Cortez. We tried to sell them paste. Their response was "thanks for reminding us about your fine", and they left.

No one from the LPI- has ever interacted with any of the (Synth) transports from the linked forum RP. No one from LPI- has ever witnessed a (Synth) ship acting unlawfully or doing anything that would logically make all (Synth) players hostile to the police. I don't mind that LPI doesn't share Synth's style of humor. I don't even mind that they charged us a parking ticket, that's legitimately cute, if not a bit unfairly priced. But when they use their rights to alter our game mechanics in such a way that makes our ships unflyable in our home turf, and the admins back this up without all the necessary interaction, well... that raises an eyebrow.

Still, for the moment, I'm content to work with what I'm given. I'll keep playing it by ear in the communications thread linked above, but this is one FR5 request that should not have gone through.

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[Seraph]

I'm genuinely curious what you expected by sending that transmission.

I have absolutely no clue who is behind that account, but you should know that LPI under my administration has shown multiple times the precedent that the age of "coffee and donuts" has come and gone. Nevertheless, you chose to act like a clown and you were given a clear signal that it is not the way we want to do our RP. Righteous anger over the amount of the fine in this case is absolutely unjustified, as you should know running a trade faction making 150 millions on three ships is an absolutely trivial matter.

On that entire "I was only pretending": haha yes, epic troll XD. Unfortunately pretending to break the law and not submitting to consequences even has a Wikipedia article.

Bottom line is, you brought this upon yourself.

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"When one is made of glass, everything looks like a stone."

[Zukeenee]

I've been out of the game a few years. Came back, did some Synth RP with an LPI- ship (Which from a quick search appears to be Saronsen), and it all seemed pretty "coffee and donuts" to me. He's the one who suggested Synth make a deal with the LPI.

What I had hoped for from the thread was a bit of fun back-and-forth. Or at worst, just a "No". My fault for not grasping the current LPI- attitudes, I suppose. By the time I was given any signal of your anti-clown policy, the damage had been done already.

I guess we've got different ideas of what's a reasonable fine, but the claims from the chief legal officer are in-RP. I mean, if you legitimately had to photoshop some Bisons in front of some stuff because you couldn't even get two of your friends to log on at 2 am, might as well try to make an RP excuse out of it, right?

I see it as a kind of weird grey area. Sure, you lead the LPI now, and you get to enforce the laws, but you wanna go so far as to FR5 an entire group because you don't like them trying to be funny? I honestly don't know how to feel about that. Hell, even while I'm on the receiving end here, I don't even think it's completely wrong. You in-RP don't like us, so you in-RP act accordingly. Y'know, despite the larger picture of the relationship between our two NPC factions. Can't imagine what kind of chaos might be breaking out on Riverside right about now.

But I'm leaving the in-RP grey area behind right now. My point is, LPI- has had no interactions with (Synth) in-game to justify this action. By my understanding, this interaction is a prerequisite for an FR5 request to be accepted. So I'm just kind of shrugging and looking at the admins and going "for reals?"

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[Zukeenee]

Seriously, though, I am looking for an admin ruling on this. Is it now possible for official factions to FR5 someone without relevant in-game interaction? Is it supported by the server rules for the police to say "I don't like your forum RP, so pay me 150 million for this made-up offense or I'll effectively shut down your player group by making your own base of operations hostile to you"? No big loss if it is, I suppose, but I feel that the wording for faction right 5 might be a bit unclear if this is how things work now.

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[Tunicle]

The FR5 template has "E) Link to role play evidence:" this was provided, moderators and admin viewed the provided material and the FR5 ensued.

This is how it has been for a long time, no changes.

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[Miaou]

Hello! I am one such synthing ship that was affected by this.

I'm very confused why you would go off a... Template instead of the actual rule. Here it is in all it's glory. I'll even highlight the important parts.

Faction Right 5. Official player factions may request that the reputation of a player's ship be changed to hostile with respect to their NPC faction. These requests must be posted within the Violation Reports subforum, and include link(s) to valid forum roleplay, as well as actual interaction between the character and the official faction. In case of IDs with multiple official factions, this right can only be used if it has support of every official faction of the ID, but in case of disagreement between the factions involved, they can post an appeal to the administrators to review the situation and come to a decision.
Groups that have been subject to the use of FR5 by another faction, may treat this faction as hostile targets, except for transports.

Now, nobody is arguing that there wasn't forum roleplay involved. But generally that comes a step after interacting ingame. You can say it has always been like that, but I do beg to differ. It's not been like that before. As stated by Zukeenee, if this is a change in the actual rules and how they are done, that's fine. If you can FR5 simply via forum RP, please state so clearly as this has not been the case for a long time.